Engineering Faculty Innovates New Strategies for Combatting Student Obesity

*** The Tin Soldier is intended to be a humorous and entertaining look at issues and events at the University of Waterloo. As such articles should not be taken to represent real events or opinions, and they should not be associated with the University of Waterloo staff or administration in any way. Any similarities to real world events, people or corporations is purely coincidental – or non-coincidental but meant in an entirely joking manner.***

The Faculty of Engineering’s Dean’s Office has partnered with the Psychology Department to enforce healthy habits among the engineering student body. These revolutionary strategies will make students healthier, happier and more competitive in the employment market. It is hoped that these healthy lifestyle strategies will achieve full effectiveness to coincide with the opening of E7 in September 2018.

Cohorts, although a cornerstone of the Waterloo Engineering Program, also serve to isolate students in classrooms for several hours consecutively. While Professors get adequate exercise, this leaves students trapped in a highly unhealthy sedentary lifestyle. To combat this, the Engineering-Psychology team also enlisted the help of the class scheduling office. In a three month study, a highly qualified team evaluated routes between classrooms. This led to the construction of class schedules which required cohorts to change classrooms every two hours. The walks between scheduled classrooms were evaluated on several factors including the number of stairs, the equivalency of indoor and outdoor routes and potential interference of motor traffic. The ideal route would take 7 minutes for the average student to walk at a leisurely pace. It has been suggested that increasing the pace required to correlate with a student’s increase in academic term may be implemented.

The completion of E7 will be the final part of indoor routes which require several flights of stairs to access. As weather gets increasingly cold, students will be driven inside.  The increased length and difficulty of indoor routes (including more stairs and less optimal indoor paths) will compensate for the decrease in student activity. “We have also strategically locked buildings in the evenings so that students get more exercise at less busy times of the day. Often they might be able to take a shorter route one direction but will be forced to take a longer way back.” Said Ryan Goldberg, team lead, quite proudly.

The Engineering Faculty and Psychology Department team are especially pleased with their success with the Chemical Engineering cohorts. Engineering 6 is particularly well set up for increasing student activity. The location of the elevators on the side of the building furthest from the plaza and CPH means that those students too lazy to take the stairs must walk an extra distance. Furthermore, although they did put the main undergrad classroom on the second floor, students are encouraged to frequently jog up to the 5^th floor between lectures to deposit assignments. Additionally, fourth year students are based on the 5^th floor, giving them many opportunities to ascend by stair when trekking to DC or E5 to print documents. These are not the only benefits of E6. Due to specially designed pressure systems within the building, students get a good full body work out as they leverage their entire body weight to open the doors to access the building.

With the exercise initiative well under way, the Engineering Faculty and Psychology Department team turned to the problem of student sleep. By strategically placing cameras outside engineering computer labs, they were able to observe student work patterns. Since it is scientifically proven that sleep when it is dark is 100% more restful than daytime sleep, Plant Ops was contacted to implement ‘Project Cooling’. Between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. cool air is pumped through the ventilation system in the computer labs. This serves to drive undedicated studiers home while providing an environment that is more conducive to being sharp and awake for those who really do need to pull an all-nighter.

Finally, student nutrition will be fully addressed with the completion of E7. The Coffee and Donut shop (C&D) will become known as the Coffee and Veggie shop (C&V). “Although our studies have shown that students readily consume the D in the C&D, we felt that after a couple of months consuming veggies instead students would find themselves noticeably better off. It’s really for the best.” Said Murphy Cheesus, lead researcher from the Psychology Department.

Now that you are aware of these new measures being implemented, be sure to submit your feed back to the drop box located on the top floor of PAS. Your constructive criticism will serve to eliminate you as a test subject from their double blind long term study. Best of luck finding your way back out of the maze! (Sweats and a sweater are recommended, if you think they’re studying us try being a psychology student!)